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Enno Littmann

Ludwig Richard Enno Littmann (16 September 1875, Oldenburg – 4 May 1958, Tübingen) was a German orientalist.

In 1906 he succeeded Theodor Nöldeke as chair of Oriental languages at the University of Strasbourg. Later on, he served as a professor of Oriental languages at the Universities of Göttingen (1914–16), Bonn (1918–21) and Tübingen (1921–49).


He deciphered and annotated Palmyrene, Nabataean and Syriac inscriptions as well as historical texts of ancient Ethiopian monuments. In 1905 he stayed among the Tigre people in Eritrea, and during the following year, directed the German Aksum-Expedition in Ethiopia.[1]


He published a translation of One Thousand and One Nights from Arabic into German, "Erzählungen aus den Tausendundein Nächten" (6 volumes, 1921–28, 3 1954).[1]

1897: "Die Pronomina in Tigré", in: Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 12, pp. 188–230, 291–316.

1898: "Das Verbum der Tigre-Sprache", in: Zeitschrift für Assyrologie 13, pp. 133–178; 14, pp. 1–102.

1902: (ed.) Debtera Zaneb, The chronicle of King Theodore of Abyssinia. Princeton University Library.

1904: Philosophi abessini. (, 18–19; Scriptores Aetiopici, 1–2)

Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium

1904: Semitic Inscriptions. New York: The Century Co. ( at the Internet Archive)

online version

1905: Modern Arabic tales. – Vol. 1: Arabic Text. Leyden: Brill. ( at the Internet Archive)

online version

1910–15: Publications of the Princeton expedition to Abyssinia, 4 vols. Leyden: E. J. Brill.

1935: Abessinien. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt.

1962: (with: Höfner, M.) Wörterbuch der Tigrē-Sprache: Tigrē-Deutsch-Englisch. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.

Biesterfeldt, H. H. (1986). "Enno Littmann: Leben und Arbeit. Ein autobiographisches Fragment (1875–1904)", in: Oriens 29, pp. 1–101.

(1958). Obituary of Enno Littmann, in: Africa 28, p. 364.

Ullendorff, E.

Ullendorff, E. (24 May 1958). Obituary of Enno Littmann, in: .

The Times

For more & detailed info cp. the German version of the Wikipedia entry re Enno Littmann!

Axel Knauf (1993). "Littmann, Enno". In Bautz, Traugott (ed.). (in German). Vol. 5. Herzberg: Bautz. cols. 134–136. ISBN 3-88309-043-3.

Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL)

by Eike Haberland, in Lissan Magazine (online magazine for Ethiopian art, culture & lifestyle).

Enno Littmann's Biography